The benefits of questioning are there for all to see. We evolved into modern human beings, or Homo sapiens, ≈ 200,000 years ago because around about then our ancestors began to deploy new and improved cognitive skills; asking and answering more and better questions. Chimps can ask and answer a question such as “Where are the bananas?” We became wise because we began to use our imagination to ask compounded questions such as, “What would happen if I combined two or more existing tools into a new way of doing things?” Ta-dah! A long-distance hunting spear with a wooden shaft and a razor-sharp obsidian rock tied to it as a spearhead, and maybe an Atlatl for added distance.
More questions must have been prompted and soon our distant ancestors combined this new tool with fire, and life improved, as did nutrition, and so did brain size. Invention begins with questions. And children know how to question from birth. It is a Hybrid Skill.
Children do not have to prompted to ask, “What would happen if?” It is in the human DNA. You would not be reading this, and I would not be writing it if we had not evolved through questioning.
#Ideation #Hybridskills #Justifiedbelief #Futureproof #Infoliteracy
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Excerpted from my book Hybrid Learning.
